Guild Wars 2 Explodes With Goodies In New Update

Guild Wars 2, which took the world by storm a little over a year and a half ago and made waves among the gaming community with its “living world” content, conjures up another masterpiece with the release of their new feature pack that has the fans drooling and the competition weeping. As the first MMORPG ( massively multiplayer online role-playing game) to allow user-based criticism and ideas as the foundation of their creation, the staff at Arenanet, creators of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, have thrown away much of the mechanics the first day players have seen, making the game more fun and involving as a group than ever before. This new arrival only cements that.

The first thing fans of the game will notice is the new account dye system. Previously, any dye picked up as loot or bought from the in-game trading post worked only on the character it was used on. While this was fine for low-end dyes that didn’t cost much, to get a really good look on the five characters you start with was a money sink fans found unappetizing. To rectify this, the staff introduced an account based dye system that offers every character every dye you’ve already used. If this weren’t good enough, every time you log onto a character after your initial character you are rewarded with unidentified dyes for every copy each character has that another unlocked. So, for example, if you have 5 characters with starry night dye, the first character you go on with it unlocks it, and the other four give you a free, unknown dye. With the hundreds of different dyes available in Guild Wars 2, players have seen hundreds and even thousands of unidentified dyes fill up their inventory.

This would be a good thing if the massive influx of dyes into the game economy had not crushed their worth, leaving the fans who had invested the most sitting with a good deal of nearly worthless rewards. This could have proven fatal for the change in dye function, but luckily the game update was also the start of their newest region entering the game. China will now have the power to face down villains, save cities, kill dragons and hunt down psychotic planet women like everyone here on the west side of the world. While China will have their own country server that will bring them together with people who are used to a more Asian flair, the in-game trading post is shared by all, meaning the cost of dyes will eventually rise up once more. But it will take time to recover from a nearly 95 percent drop in price in just one day.

Weapons and armor take next priority and what the new feature pack has to offer gives all the delight the dyes promised, with none of the drawbacks. Each time a player logs into a character, the character’s attire and weaponry are added to a closet. This closet takes the skins of each item your character has and hangs it away so any other character may use the look of it. This is broken down into weight categories of light, medium and heavy, and then set into subcategories for the individual pieces of armor and weapon. Previously, if you obtained a weapon or bit of armor, you needed one of two types of transmutation stones; one for max level items and one for those below max level. This became an annoyance and left too many windows up to deal with. For this reason the staff at Guild Wars 2 simplified everything with a single transmutation charge that works on every armor and weapon skin in the game. One charge will take the look of an item and skin it over the item you already have. The stats will remain the same as your original item, but your look can be whatever you want it to be.

To give your spell casters a little more magic and your warriors a chunk more power, two-handed weapons were given a second upgrade slot, allowing for more speed, power, defense and more to truly make your weapon different from the rest. This allows for more dynamic and explosive battle whether you are running someone through with your legendary Twilight sword in PvP or zapping rabbits out of existence with your gnarled oak staff in PvE. This upgrade also helps balance out some minor issues in World vs. World, a three-way playground of objectives and PvP combat, allowing two-handed combatants the same edge as two-weapon players.

Saving the best for last comes the new megaserver overhaul. Not pleased with how their multi-server gameplay was, Guild Wars 2 threw away the previous design and created the megaserver that watches every player, considers their goals and activities, and places them on a server that has people from all over doing the same. Veteran players of the game lamented over the pre-release beta tests and how they craved having everyone working with one another. The separate servers failed at this with the three added styles of gameplay, meaning on some servers players found themselves facing dangers all alone. The megaserver promises to eliminate this, allowing for people to come on at any time in any place in the game and find others doing just what they are. So far, there seems to be no major complaints.

Finally, the Guild Wars 2 crew offers a nod to players of the immensely popular Guild Wars by introducing grandmaster trait captures obtained through various quests. This was one of the favored features on the original game, with elite skill captures an integral part of the game’s play, and fans petitioned their love of it to the Guild Wars 2 blog site. The creators could have been more happy.

“These new traits are intended to further open up build possibilities and to give existing builds a much more defined role; quite a few of these traits are being implemented based on feedback from the community.” The Guild Wars 2 official website boasted.

Traits allow you to master your own personal style of combat and, along with the grandmaster traits mentioned above, complete customization of your character’s combat style and abilities. With so many variances now possible, you will never run into a clone.

All in all, Guild Wars 2 has earned its rightful place on the top the gaming community throne and, with all the goodies they have thrown at us and all the stuff still to come, no game has ever been more rewarding to play than this one.

Guild Wars 2’s megaserver update and patch primer: http://t.co/yXzRnWHEfh #gw2 @GuildWars2 @RichieProcopio

— massively (@massively) April 16, 2014

Overwhelmed by the feature pack changes? Check out my new patch primer to get up to speed on all things @guildwars2 http://t.co/A87yeqJ7rK

— Richie Procopio (@RichieProcopio) April 16, 2014

Inquisitr’s own Wolff Bachner gabs the energy drinks and heads into the basement to find out just how enjoying Guild Wars 2 really is in his compelling story.